


between wind and earth

by bluemu



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, Pre-Battle of Hoth (Star Wars), Stick an asterisk on the Luke/Han tag because Han is delirious and doesn’t know what he wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28860609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemu/pseuds/bluemu
Summary: Luke has ripped the ground out from under him two times now.Two timeshe should have died for abandoning the one good thing life ever taught him. Two times too many. And bleeding-heart Skywalker here doesn’t even know it.Or: Han is half-frozen on an ice planet because he went stupid and charged into the jaws of death. If he dies next to a mutilated tauntaun with this kid in his arms, he'll have asked for it.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Luke Skywalker/Han Solo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	between wind and earth

To be frankly and entirely honest, Han is surprised he is still alive.

He _hurts_ — his skin, rubbed ragged under his clothes, the goggles squeezing his temple, his bones, his nails. Right down to the roots of his frosted hair. It’s as if he aged thirty years in the span of a single night.

Was it a night…? It’s silent now, and faint light colors the insides of his eyelids in a washed-out soup of reds and muted white blues.

The weight against his front shifts, sparking electric recognition of something he’d forgotten was there. Han peels open one stiff eye. Luke stretches up a little, like he's trying to bury his face in Han's neck. The extra scarf Han wrapped over his face has slipped loose; his nose and mouth have got to be numb enough to break right off.

"H…an." The sound cracks out from Luke. It's the first sign of life he's shown in ages, and sweet relief bubbles up under Han's breast.

He licks his broken lips. "Good to hear you, kid," comes out hardly a whisper. He readjusts his grip around Luke's arms and chest, pointedly ignoring the half-frozen intestinal gunk slathered all over both their bodies. At least the biting cold sort of killed off the smell. “Y’should know, you're gonna make me s-stink for weeks."

Luke makes a small _mmh_ in the back of his throat.

The looming, woolly hunk of the tauntaun corpse shields them from a good deal of the dawn wind. Han has Luke sandwiched between himself and the creature's open stomach. Plucked right out of the desert as he was, Luke has struggled with the cold since they have been on this rock more than anyone Han’s ever seen — the least he can do is try and block out as much of the cruelty of Hoth as he can.

Han slowly pries both his eyes open, the lids tight with frost. With great effort, he cranes them up to the sky.

The storm had passed, the last of it whirling away…blast, maybe a few hours ago? A few days? No telling. But now the air is gentle. Only the wisps of clouds glide high above them.

He swallows hard, and again, trying to wet his throat. "Look'it that…" It croaks out of him anyway.

Peering over, he catches sight of two thin antennae sticking up from the other side of the tauntaun — that’s right, so he _hadn’t_ dreamed putting together that half-assed radio in the dark of the dying storm. He might as well have. If the base wouldn’t have rolled out the search party for Han, they definitely would for their top pilot.

Luke is heavy against his collar, his chest, all down his body where Han dragged him up half on top of him and half at his side. Luke's arms are curled around himself. The dull brim of Luke’s headwrap has been digging into Han's shoulder this whole time, but he didn't have any better way to cover Luke's head, and his wounds…they make Han wary, so the headwrap stayed on. Han knows his bones are going to hurt like hell later.

Yes, later. They are going back to Echo Base whether someone finds them or he hauls them both there himself. He didn't throw himself out into this powdered wasteland for a rescue mission that just ends with both of them becoming a permanent feature of the landscape.

Han listens for the frail shake of air passing through Luke's lungs. Luke's body rises and falls on his chest with his own breath, and Han’s gaze lowers. His lidded stare is fixed on nothing.

He knew it was mad, he damn well knew it — allowing himself to be the type of man who drops all his sense and regard for his own neck in response to other people's problems. It's stupidity, disguised in flashy propaganda of _Courage_ and _Honor_ and _Sacrifice!_ It's pompous, it’s hollow, and it rarely does anybody any good. If he was that type of man, Han would have been dead ten-thousand times over by now.

Every damn day, it took a star's ton of hard-learned caution and pure dumb luck for him and Chewie to not end up a pair of laser-fried blood splatters against a wall. Or, you know, just arrested. That was work enough. The more lives he decided were worth risking his own, the more the scales tipped.

And — his mouth is tight. _This kid_. It’s an irritated _tick_ in his mind even as his arms hold Luke steady. This scrawny, smart-mouthed little sand flea. This wannabe freedom fighter. He's managed to bust up the scale entirely.

Luke has reached out his hand and he’s pulled Han back from the cusp of his inbred dogma, hauled him by his jacket into the spotlight of a galactic kriffing empire. Luke has ripped the ground out from under him two times now. _Two times_ he should have died for abandoning the one good thing life ever taught him. Two times too many. And bleeding-heart Skywalker here doesn’t even know it.

But Han is here now. He let the scale tip to weigh heaviest on Luke's life, and he's got to live with it.

Luke is a mess. Han can only imagine what he got himself into that gave him the near-black streaks of blood on his vest collar, down his shoulder, dotted on his clothes. What really sets Han on edge are the huge half-moon gashes marring the side of his face under a swollen eye — like his head was full-on bashed into a jagged hunk of rock.

He tried to cover the slashes with both their scarves when he first shoved Luke, limp and babbling, into the steaming guts of the tauntaun, but he has no supplies for treating a carved-up face, and he's no medic. Han can keep him from freezing, but Luke needs treatment, probably water, definitely a change of clothes.

Han’s eyes wander to the antennae peeking up over clumps of fur. Maybe if he tries some of that Force hocus, just…wills a voice to come through.

Luke starts to murmur then, his words sticking and slurred. “Gotta…uhm…”

His nose is mashed against Han’s chest as he turns his face. “…He s-s-…ah, y'know, Dag’bah…?"

Han glances off to the side, plain bewildered. “Yeah. Sure, kid. Whatever you say.”

Stars alive, Luke better not have gotten the absolute sense bashed out of him. How would Han ever be able to face Leia with that? Speaking of scale-tippers — how did he manage to get himself such a pair of total menaces?

Leia would rage. She'd tell him he never should have let Luke scout by himself in the first place, and he'd agree with her. He isn’t sure what exactly she feels for Luke, but he knows she might never speak to him again if Luke’s mind is gone, and Han might be back at that cusp again, the chance to jump.

(But. Ease up. It’s probably just the cold.)

He takes in a deep breath to steady himself, and he inhales pure ice.

He coughs hard against the searing of his lungs, his body jerking up as he curls into a fit of wheezing. Blasted _hell._

Luke lets slip a startled noise when he’s suddenly bucked off his resting place. Eyes squeezed shut, Han covers his mouth and nose with the back of his hand to keep out the cold, and he collapses against his makeshift pillow that is a tauntaun leg — he spasms with a couple more pathetic coughs while he settles back.

Luke groans, and Han imagines his skin and his bones hurt just as much; probably worse. “Wh’t happened…?” he mumbles.

Eyes still closed, Han coughs again. A sheepish smile crinkles his tight skin. “Just me, kid. Forgot not to breathe.”

He gets a puzzled puff of air in response, and Luke’s body goes loose again. Luke's chafed, blood-crusted face rests almost entirely in the side of Han’s chest; the brim of his headwrap jabs into bone. Even if those big gashes heal right, he doubts Luke will ever look as soft and boyish again.

He squints up at the brightening sky. Wind whistles, sailing shapeless paths high above and out across the vast, white nothing that surround their tiny huddle of life. In the opportunity of the passive emptiness, a thought, airy and quiet, rises to the front of his mind.

Han can’t bring himself to remember the last time he’d…held someone.

Is “held” the right word? Sounds too intimate. But that is what he’s doing — for the benefit of their survival, anyway. He hasn’t really had many shots in his recent life at holding someone, even well before all this rebellion bunk. But what is he — nah… This isn’t that sort of holding… _Luke_ of all people isn’t that sort of someone.

Now the princess, she could be, if she ever stops acting like he personally ruined her life. Leia is…stunning, brave and opinionated, unpredictable as a solar flare.

(Luke sighs, gentle, and Han thinks he feels it through three layers of clothes.)

Leia won’t ever settle for him.

It’s got to be the slipperiness that sets these thoughts adrift that wakes his nerves and makes him heavily aware of his body, his arms. One is trapped low behind Luke’s head, all but cradling it in the crook of his elbow; the other is wrapped over Luke’s arm and across his back. And his hands, the one at the lip of the headwrap, fingers curled by Luke’s brow, the other splayed over crisscrossed vest threads at the height of his spine.

Han’s nostrils flare, jaw grinding as he exhales hard through his nose and drives the whole entire blasted line of thought out of his head. His friend is half _dead,_ and covered in _stinking_ innards, and hardly has enough sense to speak, and what in the name of hell’s nuts is _this_ he’s doing?

Again, it’s just the damned cold. He might as well be on death's door.

The hand at Luke’s back draws into a fist, and Han — he doesn’t pray, got no one to pray to, but boy, he just hopes the rebels sent out a recovery team at first light. Leia would have ordered it done, no question; Chewie would’ve strangled anyone who refused her, or so he likes to think.

He flexes his toes, props up one aching knee with a sigh. At some point here, he knows they are going to _have_ to move. Luke, in impressive contrast to his usual headlong determination to _do_ , seems to be in no hurry to do a thing. But he’s also wounded, kriffing exhausted.

Han’s also not exactly excited by the idea of slogging through calf-high snow under a blinding sun in some vague direction of the base. His mind balks at the thought. As much as he aches, as unsettled as he becomes the longer he’s awake, he is crushed to this spot under the dregs of some heavy, listless peace.

The unmoving rest is a relief. The lasting silence, the solid body alongside his own. One time, when he was a wild kid raring to try wild things, he downed a shot of Slick in the middle of a back-alley den, and the reeling calm that tipped him over into oblivion then…well, it might as well have been a cheap sham to this.

Luke’s breath is an easy rhythm; he could have slipped back into sleep by now. Han knows that could be risky — if he’s in worse shape than he looks, he might not come back out of sleep at all. But, a short final stretch of this reprieve won’t hurt, not if they are going to need all their strength later.

Han’s mind has begun to drift, no thoughts jolting like bright holocrons behind his eyes; nothing but some formless dark tide, a push and pull suspended between wind and earth. Warmth settles in his core like silt on a lakebed. His arm over Luke stretches across his shoulder blades, enfolding him further. The hand resting along Luke’s face slides gloved fingertips down the height of his bloodied cheek. He can’t _remember_ the last time…

Han freezes; he is whiplashed to the surface.

His head rolls to the side, one eye cracks open. He could swear he just heard a noise, something tinny, like interference in radio signal. He strains to hear more.

The wind blows, Luke deflates with his exhale, and the noise, it’s gone… Han purses his lips, but then the tension is washed from his face and his eye slides shut again.

“… _This is_ Rogue Two _…_ ” A burst of speech from behind the tauntaun. “… _Captain Solo, do you copy…?_ ”

Han sits bolt upright and Luke full-on rolls off of him and hits the underside of the animal. Han wrenches himself over to his side, every inch of him pained and quaking as he struggles to find his feet. Luke’s hand goes to the wounds under his crumpled brow as he expels a quiet, “ _Kriff,_ Han.” Han doesn’t have the time to feel bad.

He shoves off the ground and hops and stumbles like a toddler around the snowy mound of dead meat. He catches the red blip of the transmission sensor on the radio’s top panel just as it blinks out.

“… _Commander Skywalker, do you copy…? …This is_ Rogue Two…”

Han nearly falls on his face as he scrambles for the switchbox, and he jams his thumb down on the communicator.

“Good _morning_ ,” he crows, throat rent by the effort. “Nice of you guys to drop by!”

He is met with the short chuckle of the pilot, and only seconds later do his ears catch the telltale whirring squeal of a snowspeeder rising from behind a ridge to the north.

Han’s heart thunders, and he grabs hold of their furry corpse friend to haul himself up again and keep from skidding back into their excuse of a shelter.

He drops into a squat in front of Luke, ignoring the scream of his muscles threatening to give out. Luke is slouched back against the tauntaun, face still turned into his glove, squinting at Han like a searchlight beam is shining straight in his face. He’s still in a past world, one of rest and warmth that Han is already blasting ahead from.

“Look alive, junior,” Han says. He plants a solid hand on Luke’s knee to hearten him as he shoves back the hood of his parka. The spell is broken. The day breaks.

“I think the cavalry’s coming.”

-

Later, when he is all swagger and easy smiles in the white of the medbay, teasing Luke that he now owes him twice over, Han will turn to the princess and he’ll smile wider.

He’ll chase her keen gaze and her impeccable grace, and he’ll turn away from the quiet, pale eyes. He'll try to forget that his scale was ever tipped so much at all.

**Author's Note:**

> i was a surface-level fan of the star war and then skysolo grabbed me by the neck and threw me headfirst into the void, and here we are!
> 
> thank you for reading! if you feel compelled to leave a comment, please do. i do love screaming about these characters 👏


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